Ramblings

Lots of random thoughts tonight:

-         “It’s a Wonderful Life.” I always cry at the very end when George reads the inscription from Clarence in the book: “No man is a failure who has friends.” I liked the movie when I was little, but I remember the first year that it made me cry. I was surprised, because I had watched it so many times before, but I had never really understood the depth of what it was about. This year it also made me start thinking about how the world would be different if I had never been born. Am I living life in such a way that my absence would cause a noticeable difference?

-         “Dr. Who: The Big Bang.” I think it has surpassed “Blink” as my favorite episode of Dr. Who ever. The character of Amelia Pond is brilliant, and of course it would be her part that I like the best in this episode:

Amy: Sorry everyone, but when I was a kid, I had an imaginary friend, the Raggedy Doctor, my Raggedy Doctor. But he wasn't imaginary, he was real.

I remember you! I remember! I brought the others back; I can bring you home too! Raggedy man, I remember you! And you are late for my wedding!

I found you; I found you in words just like you knew I would; that's why you told me the story, the brand new, ancient blue box. Oh clever, oh very clever.

Rory: Amy, what is it?

Amy: Something old. Something new. Something borrowed. Something blue.

-         Family: My parents and brother are with my Grandma, and they were here yesterday. So near, so far at the same time. If I could choose any super power in the world, it would be teleporting.

-         Luna’s allergies are kicking in again. Now her eyes are all dug up.

-         I’m super excited to go to Ha Ha Tonka State Park on Saturday. Yes, it really is called that.

-         Violins are my most favorite instrument in the world.

-         A couple of days ago, I was pulling out an old photo that my Grandma wanted back from me. I took it to Wal-mart to make a darker copy of it, and I was telling Josh and Ben about it. I told them it was of a soldier and I strained my brain to remember what his last name was, and I came up with “Winters.” Josh asked, “Dick Winters?” And I said yes. Josh said, “Nah-uh.” And I said, “Yes. Well, I think his last name is Winters. I know his first name is Dick, because he signed the picture. Why?”

Josh explained that Dick Winters was the guy from “Band of Brothers,” and the three of us spent the next couple of hours Googling Dick Winters and comparing pictures, trying to figure out if it was the same guy (since it turned out that Dick Winters was from Pennsylvania.) It wasn’t until the next morning that I remembered that his last name was “Peters” not “Winters,” but we had a fun time with it for a little bit.

On This Day

The basic information about events on this day was taken from
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/index.html. All of the added information was from various other places. I just thought it was all rather interesting.

On this date in: 1653 Oliver Cromwell became lord protector of England, Scotland and Ireland.  Not the prettiest of men. Also, he was part of a group who tried to abolish Christmas, obviously unsuccessfully. 1770 Composer Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany. 1773 The Boston Tea Party took place as American colonists boarded a British ship and dumped more than 300 chests of tea overboard to protest tea taxes. (Please see earlier blog posting discussing this event: http://nomadicinklings.blogspot.com/2010/10/late-night-history.html) 1809 Napoleon Bonaparte was divorced from the Empress Josephine by an act of the French Senate. (I was curious, so I looked it up: It seems that Napoleon initiated the divorce for political reasons, and they were both quite sad about it.)  1901 Margaret Mead, the American anthropologist who authored 44 books and over 1000 articles, was born. (She's the one that the Christian anthropologists throw fits about because of her very first major work "Coming of Age in Samoa.") 1916 Gregory Rasputin, the monk who had wielded powerful influence over the Russian court, was murdered by a group of noblemen.  (I've always thought he was particularly creepy, and read this, taken from SignaVeritae, a Catholic website: A certain Khionia Guseva thrust a knife into Rasputins abdomen, and (graphic content warning) seeing his entrails hanging out of himself, convinced that he was dead, walked out onto the street, yelling out that Rasputin was dead.  After intense surgery, however, Rasputin recovered.  Later he was properly killed because of his influence over the Tsaritsa, among other reasons.) 1917 Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke was born in Minehead, England. 1944 The Battle of the Bulge during World War II began as German forces launched a surprise counterattack against Allied forces in Belgium. (This was an absurd plan of Adolf Hitler's that seemed somewhat successful at first, but failed.) 1950 President Truman proclaimed a national state of emergency in order to fight "Communist imperialism." 1985 Reputed organized-crime chief Paul Castellano was shot to death outside a New York City restaurant. 1990 Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected president of Haiti in the country's first democratic elections. 1991 The U.N. General Assembly rescinded its 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism. (I never knew there was a UN resolution that said that Zionism=racism.) 1998 President Bill Clinton ordered a sustained series of airstrikes against Iraq by American and British forces in response to Saddam Hussein's continued defiance of U.N. weapons inspectors. 2000 President-elect George W. Bush selected Colin Powell to become the first African-American secretary of state. 2007 British forces formally handed over to Iraq responsibility for Basra, the last Iraqi region under their control. 2009 Iran test-fired a missile capable of hitting Israel and parts of Europe. Quite an interesting day in history, I must say.

Onward

Why I want to live in:

-         Bulgaria: You can buy a 3-bedroom home for 21,000 dollars in beautiful areas. 

-         Turkey: There are so many interesting places to see there. Check out just a few:

 

-         Anywhere in the UK: the accents, the literature, the history, and I like BBC shows.

-         Italy: Rome, beaches, and mountains. Plus, you can buy an AMAZING ruined house for 30,000 dollars.

I think I’m going to have to move to Europe.

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Ever since I was little, I’ve enjoyed the thought of making Christmas gifts for people. Maybe it was my obsession with Little House on the Prairie, maybe it was the fact that we lived overseas and didn’t have the overabundance of stuff that there was available here. Whatever the reason, I am in love with the idea of making people gifts for Christmas.

Not that I ever do it. I remember one year as a kid thinking that I could use the cool animal pictures on yogurt cups to make some kind of gift, or maybe advent calendar. (I don’t know why I have this obsession with reusing yogurt cups, but there you have it.)

I don’t think that I have actually ever succeeded at making a gift for anyone for Christmas. I tried to last year. I was going to make a Dr. Who scarf for Josh that would look something like this:

Now, I did get started. The scarf I am making is about a foot wide and by Christmas it was at half of my desired length of twelve feet. Today it is at about six and a half feet long…

I did make some purses this year. I wasn’t intending to use them for Christmas gifts, but I’m going to send at least one to my Grandma. These are some of the purses I made: (The orange one on the bottom is the one I’m giving to my grandmother.

I think I’m pretty good at coming up with good ideas for gifts. I’m not always great at following through and getting them. Usually I think of a great gift a couple of months before Christmas, then I get busy and forget about it until it is too late.

Most years I think it’s difficult to get gifts for Josh, but this year, I’m about done shopping for his gifts. I got every single one of his gifts online, and that made it much easier.

Along the way, I found some other very cool ideas for Christmas gifts. Here are just a few:

Some jewelry I think is pretty cool: 

(Rings of Power)

(I'm kind of getting into the whole steam punk thing.)

(I like trees... what can I say?)

And some jewelry from books/movies/tv shows:

(Firefly)

(The Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, the Invisibility Cloak)

(From the "Blink" episode of Dr. Who... my favorite.)

 Things to hang:

(You can get this in any color you want...)

(Yay! I love this!)

(Especially if you have guests coming...)

 Things to wear:

(I'm pretty sure the whole poem is there.)

 

(They're hairpins!!!)

 And some final randomness:

(Apple Snitch)

(It's caffeinated shower gel.)

(So everyone thinks you're a ninja.)

Happy gift-buying everybody! I'm off to knit a scarf...

Drivers of Missouri

I must just say that I really hate Missouri driving. I have never gotten more frustrated on a more consistent basis than I do driving here in Springfield. Here are just some of the things that make me crazy:

1-     People in Springfield don’t use turn signals.

2-     People in Springfield text and drive. This may be true of drivers everywhere, but I never really saw it until I came here.

3-     People in Springfield are overly cautious about starting through green lights. I think this is my biggest annoyance. Today I watched as a turning arrow turned green, then yellow, then went out before the first car had turned, and it was NOT a short green arrow. I have seen people sit and watch for a full twenty seconds before venturing timidly into the intersection. When people finally do start into an intersection, they take about twenty seconds to get up to 40 mph.

4-     People in Springfield do not know how to work the right-of-way at four-way stop signs. If two or more cars pull up to a four-way stop at the same time, they will sit there… and sit there…sometimes they wave, each trying to get the other to go first into the scary intersection.

5-     People in Springfield have no idea what to do with nice drivers. I don’t know how many times I’ve tried to let a car from a side road or lane into traffic by slowing down. They don’t get it. The drivers sit and stare at you as if there is something wrong. Even if you wave them in… they don’t come. Or if they do, they wait the mandatory twenty seconds before venturing into the roadway. I’ve quit trying to be a nice driver here because it just causes problems.

6-     People in Springfield don’t know how to use multiple lanes. This is what the typical car lineup is at a stop light:

 At first I thought it was people turning (and not using their turn signals), but no, cars just stack up in one lane. Cars will wait for the next green light to stay in their lane. It’s not always the right lane, either. Sometimes it’s different lanes at the same intersection depending on the time of day. I don’t understand it. I really believe that you can cut down your travel time by 30% just by switching out of the busy lanes.

All that being said, people here do seem to wear their seat belts pretty consistently. I guess that’s one thing they’ve got going for them….